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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

You're an engineer if you do engineering, regardless of your credentials. You aren't an "<insert-credential-here> Engineer", but the mere noun doesn't assert that. The Minnesota Board of Engineering Licensure is a bully that should be leashed by the first amendment.

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This is how every state backed/endorsed (or state operated, but those are less common) professional licensure board or trade association that gate-keeps licensing works. They all aggressively defend and try to expand their turf, even when it's stupid and harmful to society.

The only reason we don't hear about the plumbing cartel going after the home repair business that isn't licensed for plumbing in every state it operates in but wrote "plumbing" on its vans in all states is because HN doesn't really concern itself with those sort of matters.

>This is how every state backed/endorsed (or state operated, but those are less common) professional licensure board or trade association that gate-keeps licensing works.

I wouldn't limit that statement to state-backed: it is how most (or at least many) private organizations and unions work too, from teamsters to fifa to the NRA. State backed organizations just have the extra advantage of being explicitly state backed.

It's a really hard task to compare engineering to plumbing.

I mean the board that licenses Civil Engineers, for example, should be very stringent. We don't live in buildings that aren't structurally sound or drive on half-assed bridges.

Professional Engineers hold themselves to an ethical standard that they're not even legally required to uphold, yet they still do because this organization keeps them in check.

I've been a hardware engineer for 15 years. I've designed medical devices, DSP chipsets, and audio chipsets. for me to call my self a "Professional Engineer", I have to pass a test almost wholly focused on Civil Engineering. There is not a single "Professional Engineer" in my office.

I'm a nuclear engineer and also unlicensed and also know very few who are, but...

> for me to call my self a "Professional Engineer", I have to pass a test almost wholly focused on Civil Engineering

isn't true. The FE exam has a number of discipline options, including Electrical and Computer[0] and the PE exam is then done be discipline.

[0] https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/FE-Electrical-and-Compu...

That may not be true anymore - I looked into the engineering exams (FE and PE), and they've been much more specialized. I think this happened fairly recently.

https://ncees.org/engineering/fe/

So I could (but almost certainly won't) take the "Industrial Engineering" exam and focus mainly on IE topics:

https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/FE-Industrial-and-Syste...

this is new (from when I looked at it 15 years ago). good for them to expand beyond their original focus.

The PE exam isn't only for Civil Engineers.

List of Engineering Disciplines that can take the PE exam:

- Agricultural and Biological Engineering - Architectural Engineering - Chemical - Civil - Control Systems - Electrical and Computer - Environmental - Fire Protection - Industrial and Systems - Mechanical - Metallurgical and Materials - Mining and Mineral Processing - Naval Architecture and Marine - Nuclear - Petroleum - Structural

This is new (within the last 10-15 years). When I graduated in 2006, there was only 1 test and it was 95% Civil Engineering, mostly intended for signing off on electrical and structural plans.

same here, for aerospace

> It's a really hard task to compare engineering to plumbing.

Hydraulic engineers would probably be scratching their heads at this. The intersection between engineering and plumbing is well charted territory.

Yeah? Here in Minnesota we ended up driving around on half-assed bridges about a decade ago with predictable results. (Remember the I-35W bridge collapse?)

Just based on the number of idiotic major bridge designs we have had over the Mississippi river, I'm inclined to go with Marohn on this one. Kick all of the bozos more interested in politics than actual real engineering out.

Now imagine the number of fatalities and destruction there would be if just anyone was allow to build a bridge.

Probably about the same but with less money allocated toward engineers and more allocated toward testing and inspection.

Who do you think does the testing and inspection of bridges? Civil Engineers.

One issue I see is that many (most?) such certifying organizations exclude themselves from having liability when they fail. In some use cases, I think exploring alternatives may yield a better blend of trade-offs. One example would be insurance-based approaches which incentivize more accurately pricing risk.

> certifying organizations exclude themselves from having liability when they fail

That's convenient. The organizations assert that they can tell certified persons what's allowed and not, but if the certified person follows all the rules and something still goes sideways, the license ends up being worthless, because they can't say, "I did it this way because that's what the standards I'm required to adhere to say"?

As a programmer (who gets titled "software engineer" whether I liked it or not) this is terrible. What incentive would I have for getting a license if it doesn't protect me from liability?

When you get your Professional Engineering license. You also get the PE stamp which allows you to approve public projects.

When you give your stamp of approval on a project then you're legally liable for it.

You can be sued for incompetence. Then, you have to go to court and defend yourself. Or, more commonly, your company will send a lawyer but you still may be called to testify.

Plumbing is an applied discipline where you do stuff within a protocol.

Most public works and building is template driven with standardized components. Highway bridges pretty much look the same if they were built at the same time. There’s probably 10-15 guys in the average state who periodically update the standards. 80% of the rest of the work is drudgery done by overworked, underpaid assistants and non-professional engineers, signed off on by a PE later.

What PEs do accomplish is making it outrageously expensive to perform basic public works that were accomplished successfully by a DPW guy with a paint roller 40 years ago. Painting a crosswalk and installing a traffic light costs nearly $1M, because you need to hire an engineering firm to duplicate a template, and sign off on placement of lines, etc.

It's only hard if you are viewing the world through classist glasses. Plumbing is a skill with real world consequences when that skill is executed poorly, just like engineering.

OK now do doctors.

Any university can hand out an honorary doctorate. You can also call yourself Dr. Whatever with zero credentials without getting into legal trouble. You will not have the license to practice medicine in the state, but that's not really what the word "doctor" means anyways.

I’m guessing you’re referring to the Latin doctore, which means teacher, and how it’s different from medicus, which means medical doctor or at least something much like it. The only place I’ve seen doctor used in English to mean doctore is in Catholic contexts.

But in English using the title Doctor is assumed to mean medical specialist in general circumstances. Any Ed.D that stands up when the flight attendant asks, “Is there a doctor on the plane?” deserves a scolding at the very least.

Interestingly every single American with any kind of a technical Ph.D that I’ve ever met goes by first name and doesn’t balk at being called mister in all but the most formal circumstances (Germans are an entirely different matter). It’s the ones with Ph.Ds in things like English that get demanding about being called doctor in everyday life.

> doesn’t balk at being called mister

Many doctors these days are women.

> But in English using the title Doctor is assumed to mean medical specialist in general circumstances. Any Ed.D that stands up when the flight attendant asks, “Is there a doctor on the plane?” deserves a scolding at the very least.

I dunno... Jill Biden made an ad in which she called herself by her title 'Doctor' (which is proper, since she has an EdD) and then gave advice on COVID, and we were told that this was sexist because she's really a doctor by many mainstream news outlets.

A doctorate is specifically an academic credential. A closer analogy would be "healer". Or if he claimed to be a doctor of engineering.

I think he's referring to medical doctors, who are licensed in a way similar to engineers and lawyers, not PhDs.

And also the SEC. It is absolutely terrible that private sector cartels like FINRA are allowed to exist.

That is a product of tax money. FINRA is allowed to exist because the SEC is limited in total security examiners by budget limitations.

Please do.

As someone that spent hundreds of thousands to get answers, and majority of my answers came from other people going through same nonsense.

For anything complicated you have to become your own doctor. Medical community is broken on all but straightforward cases.

You're only a professional engineer if you pass the PE exam.

You can't legally present yourself as a professional engineer without that license.

It isn't credible to assume that anyone who identifies themselves as an engineer is fraudulently asserting to be a National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying Professional Engineer. It's a huge linguistic power grab to call that confusing. "Here's a common noun for a profession, and now you can't use it without paying us" is a nice business plan for collecting rents indefinitely.

The issue as described in the article is holding himself out as a “professional engineer” because that implies licensure. Specifically here the issue is that it is a claim to a legally relevant credential...i.e. as qualified to render expert opinion in a legal context.

> The issue as described in the article is holding himself out as a “professional engineer” because that implies licensure.

I will guarantee you that is not how that vast majority of the population would interpret it. Very few people even know that there is such a thing as a licensed professional engineer.

Most reasonable people would take the term "professional engineer" to mean somebody who performs engineering work of some sort in a professional capacity.

Actual doing something should take precedence over some license primary used to gatekeep a profession and fill state coffers with licensing fees.

The fact that we still have guilds operating in the 21st century is embarrassing.

'Professional Engineer' is a specific legal qualification. Further this isn't a case of lay people using a term incorrectly, this is a case of a professional engineer leading a movement to change professional engineering, using the term to help establish his expertise in marketing material.

>I will guarantee you that is not how that vast majority of the population would interpret it.

I disagree.

>Very few people even know that there is such a thing as a licensed professional engineer.

>Most reasonable people would take the term "professional engineer" to mean somebody who performs engineering work of some sort in a professional capacity.

Where did you source this information?

Yeah I have to say I also disagree. I'm EE, 20+ years of "professional" experience and I would never use the the term "Professional Engineer" to describe myself and I don't ever recall any collegues using that term who were not licensed. Pretty much every Engineer I know understands the difference and would never use the term. It's like saying you are a lawyer when you haven't passed the bar. In fact within the industry you would typically refer to those people as a "PE" (even if they were Civil, Mechanical or Electrtical in training). Of course it is totally fine to use the term professional in a descriptive manner, i.e. "We expect you to act in a professional manner when speaking with the customer". Of course this is only an American thing as far as I know, I have no idea what the practice would be in say Australia.

If someone calls themselves a professional musician, what would you think?

I would think it was a non-sequiter.

Not really. I have an EE degree and know all about PE. My point is people commonly call themselves a professional _xyz_ for many other professions. Why should engineering be any different? Just because some organization wants you to? It is fine if you are required to have a cert to say sell things to the general public, or to have plans approved for buildings etc. but no so to try and control who gets to be called a "professional" or to regulate speech in general.

It's not just some organization, there is a law in california.

https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/pe_act.pdf

If you don't like the law, complain to your local state legislator. For me, it didn't affect my ability to do my job or get employed, so I never cared about it. I supposed they could change the name to "licensed engineer. It doesn't bother me that the person designing roads, buildings or electrical distribution systems has to be licensed. My wife has a friend (Civil Engineer, PE) and it seems like all she does is review/approve stuff done by architects.

That's kind of the point of the whole conversation. You can't have a law that restricts what one can call yourself that does not violate the 1st amendment. Certainly you can require one to have a certificate to do certain kinds of work however.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm assuming whoever wrote the act at least reviewed it with one. Here is a snippet what is says. 6787. Acts constituting a misdemeanor ... (h) Use the title, or any combination of that title, of “professional engineer,” “licensed engineer,” “registered engineer,” or the branch titles specified in Section 6732, or the authority titles specified in Sections 6736 and 6736.1, or “engineer-in-training,” or use any abbreviation of such title that might lead to the belief that the person is a licensed engineer, is authorized to use the titles specified in Section 6736 or 6736.1, or holds a certificate as an engineer-in-training, without being licensed, authorized, or certified as required by this chapter.

So it seems like we do have a law (at least in California) that say something like that.

You would be surprised to learn then that California has many unconstitutional laws on the books.

In this specific case is it the law that's restricting his speech, or the licensing's boards actions? I'm not necessarily taking an opinion on the actual merits of the case in the article, if anything I does sound like they are infringing on his right to free speech. But that doesn't necessarily mean the law is unconstitutional. It's easy to say something is or is not constitutional, but the end of the day we have courts to decide these questions. If I still disagree I feel strongly about it I need to contact somebody who can actually change it. Am I really going to make my beliefs about what is or isn't constitutional based on some comment posted on the internet?

He's not representing himself as such to a potential client or in the context of a for-pay project, but as part of a talk. He's a person who made his living from engineering, so in that context it makes perfect common sense.

He represented himself as such to the public. The fact that he represented himself that way speaks to the value he himself placed on the credentials.

The term "professional engineer" is protected much like the term "medical doctor." Practicing medicine without a license is illegal in all states. It is perfectly credible that someone practicing an occupation is licensed to practice that occupation. The license mandates training and achievement of a minimum level of competence, which serves the public good.

I think this is a very reasonable position.

Reason magazine posted an article on this:

"https://reason.com/2021/05/25/minnesota-threatens-to-fine-th..."

While I generally oppose attempts to regulate the term "engineer", I do think Reason was a little fast and loose here. It wasn't like they went in and objected to the term "sound engineer" in a recording studio or "software engineer" at google. This was a case of using a term in a situation where it could cause confusion, although even in this case, I side with the person who wants to use the term, and against the PE regulators. I do think that professional engineering associations do have the right to create a terminology. I would just be much more restrictive in scope.

I looked into regulations around Industrial Engineering, since I have an MS in this field (my undergraduate is in math). As far as I understand, licensure in Industrial Engineering is a title designation. In other words, there's no specific practice you're allowed to do as a licensed professional industrial engineer that you wouldn't be allowed to do without this license. It simply gives you the right to professionally represent yourself as a licensed PE.

I support the licensing bodies rights to restrict narrowly defined terminology that clearly references licensure, but my personal feeling is that the scope should be very limited. In other words, I believe I should be allowed to casually refer to myself as an engineer, I think it's fine to say you're a data engineer rather than a data scientist depending on what you do. I even think it's ok to refer to myself as an industrial engineer (though I wouldn't personally especially want to).

The ambiguity creeps in if I refer to myself as a "Professional Industrial Engineer". I personally wouldn't do that, it would feel a little fraudulent, but that's a feeling, not something I'd enforce through law or even social pressure. To stay on the right side of scope, I think I'd be ok with someone doing that as long as they didn't throw in "licensed".

As for "engineering" as a general term, I think it's truly absurd that PE bodies would think they have a general right to prevent others from using this descriptive term in job or work titles, it's as general as "scientist".

The law is right because its the law?

(wow, apparently I can't even ask...)

This seems like an odd point to make, since Marohn did pass all the necessary exams and had been previously licensed. Are you saying that, in addition to not practicing civil engineering professionally, that he has to scrub the entire internet of his title the moment his license expires?

That seems like a strawman. The complaint is that he described himself as a professional engineer while his license had expired. As in, during that period, he wasn't a licensed engineer, and therefore shouldn't have called himself one.

> Now, for the second time, a professional engineer has filed a complaint with the state licensing board alleging that the writing, speaking, and advocacy for reform of Charles Marohn—the founder and president of Strong Towns—constitutes a violation of Minnesota law.

The complaint is that, in his advocacy, he described himself as a professional engineer, which he obviously is. The idea that one needs to stay in the good graces of the state in order to reference one's experience in their field as part of their political advocacy cannot possibly withstand genuine first amendment scrutiny, can it?

> The idea that one needs to stay in the good graces of the state in order to reference one's experience in their field as part of their political advocacy cannot possibly withstand genuine first amendment scrutiny, can it?

Being licensed isn't to be within the good graces of the state, it's to prove the licensee has the requite knowledge and experience to design and construct things which, when fail, people die. This is something we want in society.

> Being licensed isn't to be within the good graces of the state, it's to prove the licensee has the requite knowledge and experience to design and construct things which, when fail, people die. This is something we want in society.

First, I don't agree that licensure accomplishes this.

But second, it sounds like you agree with the plaintiff here. Nobody is asserting that he had a legal right to perform civil engineering after his license lapsed. What he's arguing is that he had a right to reference his experience in civil engineering as part of his political advocacy.

But he obviously had that knowledge and experience. It didn't go away when he allowed his license to lapse.

According to the official site, he is a professional engineer [civil] right now.

https://www.mn.gov/aelslagid/roster.html

That depends. In Canada, for instance, you absolutely have to be certified to call yourself an engineer.

That's a myth. You can absolutely work an engineering job and call yourself an engineer in Canada without any certification. Look up all the "software engineer", "systems engineer", "marine engineer", "audio engineer", "application engineer" etc. job listings in any Canadian city. None of them are looking exclusively for certified/licensed engineers, and the people working for them aren't doing so illegally. Canadian courts have ruled many times over that professional licensing organizations do not have exclusive rights to the word "engineer".

For good reason. When I get a plan stamped by an Engineer I want to make sure they're certified to make sure my thing doesn't fall over / collapse.

I am a Software Developer - I did not graduate from an Engineering college. I am not an Engineer. The stuff I do does not kill people when it fails.

99% of people that claim to be Engineers (at least in Software) are not.

> The stuff I do does not kill people when it fails.

Oh? OK technically maybe not your job specifically, but ever hear about Therac-25? MCAS on the 737-MAX?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YaI6lhn78g

And when I last looked at doing certification, the core requirements had literally nothing to do with what I practiced (fluid dynamics for a software engineer? Take a hike)

It's all a racket. I'm an unlicensed, non-PE software engineer. Am I allowed to call myself that?

It's not a racket. Rather it means that you have not undergone the training that an engineer in Canada had undergone. The term Engineer is not protected, but the term "Professional Engineer" is. If you call yourself a Professional Engineer without a license, the provincial engineering organization is within grounds to fine you and issue a court order to cease the use of the term.

The engineering council makes it easy to get the license. Demonstrate the knowledge through a raft of exams and you will qualify. Alternatively, demonstrating 20 years of engineering experience in your field will also let you qualify.

I'm a professional software engineer. I practice software engineering as my profession. Am I not allowed to call myself that?

Also, I have in fact undergone the training that an engineer in Canada would undergo. I just didn't do the tests or pay the fees, and why should I?

Would you ask this question as a chartered accountant? A lawyer? An actuary?

If you already have the education and the experience (you need both), why not complete the ethics exam and earn the license? Is it about the fees? The annual fee in California is $180.00 [1]. The annual fee in Ontario, Canada is $299.45 [2]. Does your company not pay you enough? Are you living on hardship as a software engineer to not be able to afford that?

The real question is this: Why do you feel entitled to a designation without completing the requirements for it?

[1] https://bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/licensee_fees.shtml

[2] https://www.peo.on.ca/sites/default/files/2020-11/PEO-FeeSch...

Well, yeah. You can call yourself a lawyer even if you aren’t licensed to practice law. Many politicians still call themselves lawyers but they only practiced for a year or two out of college.

Similarly, Doctors are still doctors even when they cross borders. They just can’t practice medicine for money without a license.

>It's all a racket.

It's not.

>I'm an unlicensed, non-PE software engineer. Am I allowed to call myself that?

In many areas, yeah, you can refer to yourself as a software engineer, but the title doesn't mean anything because anyone can refer to themselves as a software engineer; there is nothing defining what that means.

> but the title doesn't mean anything because anyone can refer to themselves as a software engineer; there is nothing defining what that means.

This is incorrect. Check out what the PEO has to say about using "software engineer" as a title:

https://www.peo.on.ca/public-protection/complaints-and-illeg...

You can sometimes use the title without being licensed, but you have to be careful, as it can easily be considered misrepresentation.

> Software engineering is deemed to fall within the practice of professional engineering:

> Where the software is used in a product that already falls within the practice of engineering (e.g. elevator controls, nuclear reactor controls, medical equipment such as gamma-ray cameras, etc.);

> Where the use of the software poses a risk to life, health, property or the public welfare; and

> Where the design or analysis requires the application of engineering principles within the program (e.g. does engineering calculations), meets a requirement of engineering practice (e.g. a fail-safe system), or requires the application of the principles of engineering in its development.

In other words, the vast majority of software engineering does not fall within the practice of professional engineering.

>This is incorrect. Check out what the PEO has to say about using "software engineer" as a title

Which is why I qualified my statement with "many".

>You can sometimes use the title without being licensed, but you have to be careful, as it can easily be considered misrepresentation.

That is what this debate is about.

The parent I replied to was referring to Canada, as am I.

Which is interesting, because I have a Bachelor of Software Engineering from Australia, and am certified by the Australian Institute of Engineers... but there were a TON of Engineers at the big Canadian Telco I worked for who were hell-bent on me NOT calling myself an Engineer.

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